No, you don't want to hire "the best engineers"

Hiring only the "best" engineers is a self-inflicted bottleneck for startups. The article argues that the myth of needing top-tier talent blinds founders to the real cost of waiting for perfect candidates, while time is the most scarce resource a young company has.

Founders often stack criteria-early-stage experience, Bay-Area presence, ultra-independent, low salary motivation-mirroring every other startup. This creates months of stasis, as illustrated by the four-month hunt for a senior founding engineer that never materializes. The piece contrasts that with hiring a capable mid-level hacker who can be productive in two weeks, showing the tangible trade-offs between talent level, compensation, and time.

The core advice is to accept that you need great engineers, not the absolute best, and to make the trade-offs explicit. Ask yourself what traits truly matter today, how much you're willing to sacrifice on compensation or remote work, and quantify the dollar value of hiring now versus later. This decision-making framework turns hiring into a strategic, time-boxed negotiation rather than an endless quest for perfection.

By applying the same speed-first mindset that drives product development to hiring, startups avoid months of wasted effort that often lead to failure. The article urges leaders to be scrappy realists, to compromise where necessary, and to move fast-because the cost of waiting outweighs the marginal gains of an ideal candidate.